The second section of the book deals with another fifteen year old who managed to become the top rated legal advisor on the askme.com website, even though he came from a poor family, never touched a law book, and learned about the law exclusively from the internet and television. In both these cases, ordinary boys who otherwise would be categorized as [normal], managed to do extraordinary things by using the Internet.
The other sections of the book deal with gnutella, tivo, polling, the sense of time, and the idea that accessibility of information due to technology may lead to the downfall of mankind. I really enjoyed this book, but I though that overall it was rather incomplete, this book could have been easily doubled in size by examining more social phenomenon. I was really surprised that there was very little ink spent on the open source movement and how strangers are now collaborating on major projects. This was partially covered in the gnutella chapter, but you could write a whole book on the social implications of open source development.
In this book Lewis begins to look at some of the social implications of the Internet and some of the crazy stories that are occurring as a result of the Internet Phenomena. Examples include:
·A 15 year old becomes the leading legal advisor on AskMe.Com.
·Another youth (15 also) draws SEC fire after earning $800K in security trades through various pump and dump schemes on message board.
·An older rock band (40+ years old) get their fans to pay for their overseas tour BEFORE the concert. Ie. The fans funded the tour and they then show Lewis how they are leveraging the Internet to build a stronger relationship with their fans.
·He talks about Gnutella and peer-to-peer computing, created by an 18 year old that will radically affect intellectual capital and the way knowledge workers seek to protect it.
All and All the book is a good look at the social implications of the Internet. Other interesting books about American Culture/social changes are Credit Card Nation by Manning, Free Agent Nation by Pink and Fast Food Nation by Schlosser.